Search not showing hidden files

[Craig73]

Binary package hint: nautilus

In Nautilus, I had "show hidden files (and folders)" checked in the view menu, yet when I click the search button and search for something, it does not see the hidden files or folders. This is annoying because I just want to filter down the exceptionally large home folder (in this case, I have a .wine-* folder for each distinct Windows app and want a quick way to manage those folders, but I can't search on .wine and there is no filter mode in Nautilus)

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.10
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/nautilus
Package: nautilus 1:2.24.1-0ubuntu2
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_CA.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: nautilus
Uname: Linux 2.6.27-11-generic i686

[Craig73 (funrun73)]

(BTW... is this really to log bugs here or should I just start logging them all upstream?)

[Craig73 (funrun73)]

(BTW... is it really efficient to log bugs here or should I just start logging them all upstream?)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

you are welcome to open directly bugs upstream if you have a bugzilla account and know how to do that that will avoid to a bug triagers to do that work for you and copying comments between bug trackers, report bugs that should be fixed in the current cycle to launchpad too though

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

thanks for the repor, that's known upstream you can track it here: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=437626

[mrklister (anders-steiner)]

This is a really annoying bug, don't really understand why it has not been fixed yet.

Are most of the nautilus users beginners and don't care about hidden files?
Or are they experts that rather use the terminal?

This is to me a big usability issue and it does not sound to hard to fix (correct me if I'm wrong). People that comes from windows will most certainly get pissed when they don't understand why they don't find their files. They may even think that the search engine does not work properly in nautilus.
Therefore it should have a high priority.

[giessen (bvanderg)]

The bug report in the GNOME bug tracking system https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=437626 has it as "Unconfirmed", 3 full years after it was first reported. It also has its importance set as "Normal minor" I don't know what that is, but it doesn't sound like much.

I think this is a silly bug (or feature) that should be very easy to solve. It is so inconsequent! Either you think your users aren't grown-up enough to deal with hidden files -- and you make them permanently invisible -- or you allow people to see them -- AND search them, obviously. I see no reason to allow the viewing but not the searching.

It seems like the developers of Nautilus don't use their own product when they are developing Nautilus. I'm sure they do lots of searches and expect to find hidden things. They would have tackled this by now if they used it themselves.

What can we do to increase the importance/urgency of this bug?

[conorsulli (conorsulli)]

Bug has been on launchpad exactly 1 1/2 years and 4 days...... Running Maverick and its still here? a patch has been submitted upstream can it please be pulled in... this is crazy.

It allows for hidden files to be searched when "show hidden" files is enabled, and hides them if not.

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=437626 -- upstream bug report
http://bugzilla-attachments.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=161283 -- supposed patch

[Ari Torhamo (ari-torhamo)]

I just spent quite a lot of time searching for my .evolution folder (it has changed place in Ubuntu 11.04) with Nautilus search. I searched for "nautilus", ".nautilus", "mail", "mbox" etc. until I moved to Google, wondering where else the .evolution folder could be than in my home floder. A half an hour later I found out that Nautilus search can't see hidden files. Then I read that the bug has been open for over four years. Aaaarghhh.

Later I remembered that I have faced this bug before, but I had forgotten it. I wonder if I'm going to forget it again, and after a few years desperately searching for some hidden file that I know should be there...

Sorry for the unhelpful message.

[Craig73 (funrun73)]

Definitely not unhelpful... there are so many usability bugs that only ever get marked as low so things continue to be... well... unusable. [OK, well there is lot's of awesome work going on that I really appreciate, but this is just reconfirmation that the approach to these little things needs to change / some thing in addition to the 100 paper cuts (which is awesome) ]

[Dražen Lučanin (kermit666)]

I also see this as a serious bug - the only way to search for some hidden files (which can be important, such as .conf files) is through a terminal.

[mario (marava1)]

I add my wish to obtain hidden files when I look for them with Nautilus. I am doing some script for Unison and I need to see the .prf files that are in the hidden directory home/.unison. Now I have to search the with the terminal and it not a really pretty thing. I do not know how make a script for Nautilus, if I were able I would do it, but I am not. Someone can?

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

This has been fixed with Nautilus 3.6 which will be available in Ubuntu 13.04.